Cadman, Charles Wakefield

Cadman, Charles Wakefield

Cadman, Charles Wakefield, 1881-1946, American composer, b. Johnstown, Pa. Although he is known to the public principally for two songs—From the Land of the Sky-blue Water, based on Native American themes, and At Dawning—he composed operas, such as Shanewis (1918), The Sunset Trail (1922), and, the most successful of these, A Witch of Salem (1926). He also wrote orchestral and piano music.

He was greatly influenced by American Indian music and went so far as to travel to Nebraska to make cylinder recordings of tribal melodies for the Smithsonian Institute. He lived with the Omaha and Winnebago tribes and learned to play their instruments and later was able to adapt it in the form of 19th century romantic music. He wrote several articles on Indian music and was regarded as one of the foremost experts on the subject. He toured both the States and Europe giving his then celebrated "Indian Talk". But his involvement with the so-called Indianist Movement in American music made it difficult for his works to be judged on their own merits.

His early works enjoyed little success until the famous soprano Lillian Nordica sang one of his Indian songs, "From the Land of Sky Blue Waters". Another Indian song which became well-known in the 1920s was "At Dawning".

References

The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, Ed. S. Sadie, Macmillan, London 1980

The Chamber Music Journal ISSN 1535 1726, Vol.XIII No.1, Riverwoods, Illinois 2002 (Permission to quote and copy has been granted under the GNU License. Some of this information has already appeared elsewhere including but not limited to the website of Edition Silvertrust)